Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to The Guardian, a few months of Aussie bushfires, as has happened many times before, is somehow politically equivalent to nuclear waste spewing out of a ruptured Soviet reactor core.
Australia’s politicians face a crisis of legitimacy as fire and smoke chokes the country
David Ritter
Fri 13 Dec 2019 16.19 AEDTA government’s primary duty is to keep its citizens safe but the bushfire crisis shows past and present leaders have not lived up to that duty
Is the fire and smoke enveloping our country Australia’s Chernobyl moment?
On the 20-year anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Mikhail Gorbachev reflected that the meltdown was a “historic turning point” after which “the system as we knew it became untenable”. The catastrophe laid bare the rottenness at the core of the Soviet Union through overwhelming human and economic loss and terrifying spectacle. It was a crisis of legitimacy from which the regime did not recover.
Today Australia’s regime potentially faces its own historic turning point. The scale of the fires is colossal, with appalling loss of human life and property and the destruction of world heritage. The smoke haze is vast and toxic and Sydney is smothered in a poisonous plume 11 times worse than hazardous levels.
…
Through their words and deeds, in denying the urgency and extent of the climate emergency and in failing to act, Morrison and his predecessors have preferred ideology to reality. They contributed to enabling the conditions that are now generative of disaster.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/australias-politicians-face-a-crisis-of-legitimacy-as-fire-and-smoke-chokes-the-country
One of the main reasons greens are losing is they exaggerate. Nobody believes their wild claims of imminent extinction because we keep catching them making other ridiculous claims.
Chernobyl really was a catastrophe. A badly designed badly sited reactor constructed by big government split open, and started spewing deadly fallout across a large region, threatening to poison water systems, threatening the lives of 10s, likely hundreds of millions of people, threatening to make much of Europe an uninhabitable wasteland.
Australia’s bushfires – not so much. At least not on the same scale as Chernobyl.
People personally affected by the bushfires, I’m sorry for your losses. I can’t imagine the pain of losing loved ones or the homes you love in such circumstances.
But for most Australians, including asthmatic Australians like myself, Australia’s bushfires amount to a few unpleasant smoky days when it is safer to stay indoors.
I’m sure the smoke isn’t really good for people who breath it, but breathing a bit of smoke simply isn’t a disaster on the scale of breathing highly radioactive waste products from a major nuclear catastrophe.
Why do greens so readily burn their credibility with such wild exaggerations?
The answer of course is they truly believe what they are saying. In their minds, all that CO2 and smoke really is a disaster on the same scale as a ruptured nuclear reactor.
Which is why we shouldn’t take what they say seriously.
From experience, reminding Aussies that Eucalyptus trees go up like a rocket, so Koala’s and the trees themselves have learned to live with, or incorporate fire in their life progress, gets one the phart in a spacesuit treatment from many. If one goes further to remind em of how the Aborigines in some cases used fire to shape their environment, or that cutting back growth within a 100 foot of ones property should not be punished with fines, its inevitable that one gets to be beyond the pale.
Wouldn’t have happened back in the days of Chips Rafferty, but thats just me having a Sandy Stone moment 🙂
Can somebody translate this post into English?
What Fanakapan is conveying is that these days, should one express any basic realities that could even obliquely question the CAGW construct, one is given the “heretic” treatment by its disciples.
“Can somebody translate this post into English?”
I know, right? I mean, using an apostrophe for the plural of Koala. Oh the Koality!
It’s just like Chernobyl, that is if Chernobyl had happened naturally every year for last several thousand years, ever since the last Ice Age ended.
It happens more often now, at in precedented level since white man came and told the Aborigines to stop lighting them.
Now we have 12 suspects under investigation for lighting them. There would be many more who got away with it to go back to their organic cafe and read more propaganda in the Guardian.
“Robert B December 17, 2019 at 1:42 pm”
One of them, charged with lighting 7 on his own, is a volunteer Fiery.
But I`m sure I read back in the good days of scientific american that the worlds first run away nuclear chain reaction was in Australia back in a previous epoch caused by build of alluvial deposits and hence beat chernobyl by a million years or more ?
Jono,
Complete rubbish, no connection with reality. Please check your sources next time you set out to lower the quality of WUWT.
It has been postulated that a natural uranium accumulation at Oklo in Gabon underwent a tiny amount on nuclear fission, the process used in commercial reactors. The radioactive particles so generated did not spread over the land, but remained in place for millions of years, which is why we can study it now.
Is this your topic? Geoff S
I’m not sure the comparison to Chernobyl strengthens the argument. The most authoritative statement on Chernobyl is the UN report from 2008, which is here: http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2008/11-80076_Report_2008_Annex_D.pdf.
According to that document there were:
28 deaths resulting from Chernobyl radiation (Page 64)
15 from thyroid cancer over the ensuing years (Page 65)
4 deaths from a helicopter crash
2 from the explosion
Total is 49 deaths, of which 43 were from radiation.
Certainly a stupid stupid disaster, and certainly even one death would have been too many, but Chernobyl was far less lethal than many other disasters. Hurricane Harvey, for example, caused 68 direct fatalities.
Maybe David Ritter meant to say “Is the fire and smoke enveloping our country Australia’s Harvey moment?”
Translate into English?
No Worries!!!
Ya see, mate, we have a bonza time here in the Sunburnt Country but ya need to have a good Captain Cook at the old Gum Tree cause those buggers go off like a prawn in the sun when ya put a match to ’em and next thing ya know you are picking ash out of your Reg Grundies and your dunnys burnt down. Thing is the Koala, apart from being a vicious little prick when his danda’s up, has evolved to deal with these sorts of things because, hey, how much can a Koala Bear? So no need to get your knickers in a twist, bushfires have been part of summer since Jesus played full forward for Collingwood and anyone who thinks otherwise probably has a few roos loose in the top paddock.
Cheers, Walter. Anything to help a mate 😀
Funny, but I am sure I saw Jesus in black and yellow when he played AFL at the MCG?
If the Grauniad was actually interested in facts it might have looked back to the 6th. of February 1851, 168 years ago, when 5,000,000 hectares of Victoria, an Southern Australia went up in smoke.
The Black Thursday bushfires were a devastating series of fires that swept the state of Victoria, Australia. in 1851. Fortunately, only twelve human lives were lost owing to the small sparse population at the time, however, one million sheep, thousands of cattle and countless native animals also died.
The Black Thursday bushfires were caused in part by an intense drought that occurred throughout 1850 when the continent suffered from extreme heat. There was at that time, no ‘excessive’ CO2 in play.
“The temperature became torrid, and on the morning of the 6th of February 1851, the air which blew down from the north resembled the breath of a furnace. A fierce wind arose, gathering strength and velocity from hour to hour until about noon it blew with the violence of a tornado. By some inexplicable means, it wrapped the whole country in a sheet of flame — fierce, awful, and irresistible.”
It is believed that the disaster began in the Plenty Ranges when a couple of bullock drivers left logs burning unattended, which set fire to long, dry grass affected by the recent drought. Aboriginal people had managed these areas for tens of thousands of years, using fire-stick farming to clear out fuel build up and maintain tracts of walkable land and hunting grounds. Their displacement by Europeans meant a complete regime shift in the ecology of the Australian bush with the result that tremendous fires become possible. Over 16 years from the settlement, this process led to a catastrophic build-up of fuel.
The weather reached record extremes. By eleven it was about 47 °C (117 °F) in the shade. Survivors claimed the air was so full of smoke and heat that their lungs seemed to collapse. Pastures and plains shrivelled to wastelands, water-holes disappeared and creeks dried up. The hot north wind was so strong that thick black smoke reached northern Tasmania. A quarter of Victoria lay in a heap of desolate ruins. People fled to water to escape the suffocating air around them, returning after everything was over, to the sight of “blackened homesteads”and the charred bodies of animals that could not escape. The weather at sea was even “more fearful than onshore”. The intense heat could be felt 32 km (20 mi) out to sea where a ship came under burning ember attack and was covered in cinders and dust.
That is what is called ‘Climageddon’ and did not involve CO2 in any way.
That’s not a Guardian article , it’s “Comment is Free”. Anyone can write any crap and there is not attempt at editorial control. You should learn to distinguish between so-called journalistic content and what is basically a letter to the editor.
The Guardian is full shyte about climate and just about any other subject so you should have not problem finding an article which the Guardian actually wrote and attacking that.
At least that why they can’t just brush off any responsibility by saying it just a comment letter.
Its an opinion piece chosen to be published.
You will never see this information reported in the Grauniad, which often lies by omission. Today’s fires are nothing exceptional for Australia.
“Today’s fires are nothing exceptional for Australia.”
The truth of this observation can be ascertained by anyone, anywhere, anytime simply by reading the contemporaneous reportage by the regional newspapers, faithfully preserved & filed in the Australian government archives https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
Pro tip for schoolkids – you will understand more about climate from history studies than you ever will by reading the latest media releases about the “usefulness” of the 100 or more climate models.
“It is believed that the disaster began in the Plenty Ranges when a couple of bullock drivers left logs burning unattended”
Your description is of a local fire in a small district that is now just a couple of suburbs of Melbourne. The “Plenty Ranges” is a few hills now part of those suburbs. The fact that a fire that was supposed to have burnt a quarter if Victoria and yet only killed 12 people doesn’t add up. It’s true that the population was small (77000), but associated with that is that far less than a quarter of the state (then part of the colony of NSW) was inhabited or even explored. There were virtually no roads beyond a region around Port Phillip Bay. There is no way anyone could assess whether a quarter of the state had burnt.
By the same logic you are using there would be no way to assess whether a quarter of the state HADN’T burnt.
Therefore *I* put it to you that in reality a full half the state was burnt. By your logic you have to agree with me because you yourself say there was no way to assess the full extent.
In fact it is more logical to assume that it did and the claims made are vastly understating. With no roads or other more natural fire breaks and a land scape largely uncleared by farming it is logical to assume that once started a fire would keep burning until it ran out of things to burn or the weather changed SIGNIFICANTLY for the wetter.
Get over it. The state burnt. It is well documented. Deny it if it makes you feel better.
Nick is just a trolling ignore him. It’s a pointless discussion as everyone already noted the land use has changed massively like millions of trees that are no longer in existence. As the government and most Australian have already stated we just need to deal with the problem.
If the world stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow it doesn’t change the situation and won’t suddenly put the fires out. CO2 emissions are going to rise because of developing nations and so if it is causing increased problems well we will just have to learn to deal with it.
I disagree. Nick adds huge value to discussions at WUWT, albeit very biased IMO. I question his reliability. He can’t think out-side the box he’s been working in for a long time. Well, he is retired now (IIRC?).
Sorry, but lying is in no way considered adding to any discussion. The only thing Nick does that is helpful, is proving time and again that believers are completely dishonest.
Maybe there is no real Nick Stokes. Maybe it’s just someone out there wanting to stir the pot to get is all fired up and get a conversation going to educate each other and people outside of OZ. Maybe Andrew Bolt or even a politician might be curious as to how the public really feel.
Maybe he just never learns.
I remember when Nick was having some very disturbing cognitive issues. We were never quite sure if it was natural, or medicinally enhanced. I learned early on that he is not a straight shooter, and that at best, he only adds confusion to the mix.
If I have time, I’ll try and find some of his more delusional comments, to illustrate that very dark episode.
Victoria had the first warm day of the summer today.
The State has had some useful spring rain but is now drying out fast. The drought could be of historic proportions since James Cook and we may yet see Victoria burn as well as the northern states.
It is very clear that building within a forest is not a good idea in Australia but it still happens.
A developing change in Melbourne is the reducing size of residential blocks. Houses are now jammed together with the house covering up to 70% of the land. These houses burn well under the right circumstances. It is conceivable that residential fires could occur involving many houses. When temperature nudges 50C and the humidity is sub 10% then it does not take much to send a fire through adjacent properties. In 2009, 6 adjacent houses were lost due to a fire ignited by a metal grinder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_5CMTG7l-k
This is not a heavily treed area but enough fuel in the houses to take out 6 homes before the fire could be controlled. This is one of the locations where block size has been reduced.
Many new and younger Australians are simply not aware of the fire risk. Although this year will provide a good lesson for many.
I remember that. Anyone who has used an angle grinder on metal knows it can burn your skin if you are not careful.
Where I live, a misplaced cigarette butt would start a fire if it landed in the gutter along the side of the road. Gum tree leaves burn quick, they burn hot. But that does not compute in Nick’s computer climate models. I wonder what variable constant he uses for that?
So much BS and hyperbole in one article. I like the way he extrapolates bushfires primarily affecting one State at large scale to a national statement. It is going in to peak bushfire season, I would be amazed if at any point over the next two-three months there is not an active bushfire in every State of Australia pretty much every day. Most of the population remains oblivious especially to interstate fires , unless they are unusually large and pop up on the media.
In our little corner of Oz nothing much continues to happen , but we did have our turn a decade ago. Of course we arent in the media State and it didnt put smoke over Sydney, so no biggy and no lessons learnt apparently if the lack of controlled burns and the willingness to build in the trees is any indication. Much easier to waffle on about nebulous climate “action” than do anything real.
reckon you live where I do;-)
and yes so far only gippsland smouldering
the 700 homes etc in nsw lost countless stock and native critters is sad and to be regretted
pity the greens who wont allow forestry grazing or burnoffs dont seem to feel the guilt though
they reckon theres 4k or so? huh? brumbies in the vic alpine areas
well id say thats one spot the fires wont be or will be at manageable levels for firies
slightest smke haze on west hrizon last few nights
glorious sunsets fromit
and sweltering near 40c today still 30c tonight;-( and a few more days to go
the sudden rise from mid 20s to this is whats made it harder to tolerate
There are a lot of Australian court cases related to bush fires. In some of them the requirement for hazard reduction is cited. link
The greenies shouldn’t be able to block the prudent management of land. That seems to be a legal requirement.
You first have to suffer some damage before you can launch a legal case, you can’t launch an action before the damage. So yes the authorities may be putting themselves at risk but they will also may payouts using the taxpayers money and at best we will get to fire a few clowns but likely they will be civil servants and just redeployed to another department.
The greenies will persecute you if you clear a reasonable fire break around your house. link The High Court should strike down the criminally stupid zoning regulations that have resulted in many d*aths.
* trying to avoid moderation
“The greenies shouldn’t be able to block the prudent management of land.”
Of course they can’t. The greenies are not in any position of authority. We have a Prime Minister (somewhere) who when last seen was not a greenie.
Nick, clearly you haven’t personally experienced the process and outcomes of applying for a permit to clear vegetation within flame reach of your house and/or outbuildings.
As with all bureaucracies and politicians, don’t take any notice of what they publish or say, look instead at what they do.
And what green-infested local councils do with property clearing applications is reject, reject, reject.
And if you then go ahead with clearing anyway, it’s prosecute, prosecute, prosecute.
Come on Nick – you’re a smart enough bloke to see through this chicanery by greenie local governments.
Huh. Well if the greenies are not in any position of authority (lol), who is protecting and enabling the BOM garbage?
Really Nick!!!! From my point of view the greenies are very much indeed in a position of authority. They have infiltrated most arms of government at local state and federal levels and successfully lobbied to have law after law passed to support their paranoia. Indeed, through crushing political correctness they have built up significantly more power than the prime minister wields. Surely you are not so naive as to believe that the truly massive pressure of political correctness over years and decades, castigating and seeking to destroy anyone in authority who does not support their agenda can be dismissed by a wave of the hand. The irresponsible greens have indeed caused these fires to be as bad as they are because they successfully lobbied to have controlled burns suppressed.
If you truly think permanent arms of government have negligible power compared to elected politicians you are far less wise than I gave you credit for.
“chicanery by greenie local governments”
These are rural areas that are burning. They do not have greenie local governments.
“These are rural areas that are burning. They do not have greenie local governments.”
Yes they do Nick.
It’s not the elected Councilors that are the main rabid greenies in shire & town councils, it’s the bureaucrats who administer them. Especially the “sustainability officers” and the like.
The environment ministers for both state and federal governments in NSW were voted in by ‘green’ constituents. The greens don’t need to have power in their own right, they have infiltrated all levels of government (particularly local). I just don’t understand how the parties don’t insist that their representatives share the values of their own party.
“The environment ministers for both state and federal governments in NSW were voted in by ‘green’ constituents.”
No, they are chosen by their respective PM and Premier, both leaders of conservative governments.
In fact, the Federal environment minister, Ley, is the member for Farrer, a farming rural electorate. The NSW minister doubles as the minister for Energy.
The ‘constituents’ vote in their ‘members’, it so happens that certain seats are in predominantly ‘green’ electorates. You can’t tell me that the members don’t lobby the Prime Minister for their preferred portfolios.
The current State Minister for Planning and Public spaces, Rob Stokes has held many portfolios including Minister for the Environment. He is in a predominantly ‘green’ electorate, and in my view his values are ‘green’ through and through. I can state that from personal experience as I lived close to his electorate for nearly forty years. The whole of the Northern Beaches Peninsula is a very ‘green’ area and it became almost impossible to remove trees or to proceed with large developments. One of the roles he currently holds as State Planning Minister is for pushing wind and solar power in NSW, I only wish he would research the very dirty and toxic side of renewable energy. He ‘protects’ his own enclave at ‘all’ costs, but wants to ‘proceed’ with the ecological nightmare that he is creating in the Central West at ‘any’ cost!
Zali Steggle reassured Tony Abbott’s electorate (also Northern Beaches) that she held Liberal (right of centre) values but that it was time for a change and that she could offer a fresh approach. Turns out she had never voted Liberal in her life, she was a ‘green’ and her only platform was Climate Change. Of course she also had the backing of Getup.
The Greens save alot of money by simply infiltrating their way into government.
Just curious Nick, the name, any relation?
Nick is does not have a clue or is doing Stokes defense job. I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he has never dealt with a shire council over tree removal.
So lets educate Nick here are the tree laws across all States and Territories in Australia
https://treenet.org/resources/tree-protection-laws-in-australian-states-and-territories/
After reading it do you concede the local council in most states controls everything about large trees on your property. Now the council person that administers that has to have an education that almost always includes going thru university enviromental brainwashing. The fun part comes when enough residents complain to council and try to have them removed on the grounds of stupidity.
Western Australia is arguably the worst because it has 4 categories and try saying you want to take out 20% of the trees on your 20 acre block around the house to reduce fire risk. I already know what happens and the 3 years of fun and games that follows.
“Nick Stokes December 17, 2019 at 10:24 am”
More BS from the main BS’er. Local authorities, riddled with green types, are in positions of authority and actively prevent land management. Go read some of their sustainability statements. It has NOTHING to do with federal level Govn’t and the PM.
It seems Nick has his head stuck in his coding of computer climate models that shows reality and history to be totally wrong.
Nick,
Best you stick to your knitting.
Most people I mix with opine that the PM is a greenie because of his refusal to cease incentives for intermittent, refuses to pull out of Paris, will not clean out the RET, will not encourage nuclear energy, will not pull out of crook UN ideas like world heritage, will not encourage dam building, will not say cheerio to the soy latte inner city green voters, will not … ad nauseum.
Then again, you could argue that he is not a greenie because he calls himself a Liberal.
There is no reliable test for green identity. But then, there is no longer a gender test for male and female because one can invent a self-serving definition.
(My knitting? Five years of managing government relations for one of Australia’s larger resources companies. And more.). Geoff S
This reminds me of various communists proclaiming that unless someone is a 100% pure communist, you are some form of capitalist.
Jeesh, Nick, you really bombed-out on this thread. You’ve even way out in left-field about your own country…
Had to fight a bush-fire recently. Could have lost everything*.
It is just drought coupled with an ignition source. And add in wind.
No carbon dioxide reason required.
The Guardian is an absolute joke. The more that their hard left journalists beat this up, the more likely this old centre-leftist is going to sound like a rusty old rural conservative.
And vote accordingly.
We hopefully have only ten or twelve years before this scam starts unravelling at the seams.
*What would The Guardian journos know about fire in the Australian landscape? Come to think of it, what do they know of fire? Or the Australian landscape?
so, what’s causing the drought?
and apparently rainforest is burning – you sure that’s quite normal?
and Sydney: the air quality there goes over dangerous particulate level every year?
so, what’s causing the drought?
Lack of rain. Weather.
and apparently rainforest is burning – you sure that’s quite normal?
Yep, forest fires are as old as forests.
and Sydney: the air quality there goes over dangerous particulate level every year?
Then that would be normal, Chicken Little.
Griff, they call the vast area that is classified as ‘Sydney’ the Sydney basin. On any ‘still’ day, smog, fog or smoke from bushfires will just hang there. The smoke from past fires in NSW has been known to reach New Zealand. This is not pleasant, but it’s not new either.
Griff, who thinks half of NSW is on fire. Griff has no idea how big NSW is.
“We hopefully have only ten or twelve years before this scam starts unravelling at the seams.”
Been hearing that for a long time.
Yes. But like the Berlin Wall, when it goes it shall go quickly.
*Exactly* the losers and incels on this blog have been crapping on for more than a decade about how it’s going to get cooler soon. Meanwhile temperatures continue to inexorably rise.
Meanwhile temperatures continue to inexorably rise.
You guys are funny. Ignorant, but still funny.
Right now the winds are light within the hottest active fire areas and it will stay the way for several days. There may be fires but if not driven by hot strong winds they travel more slowly, and present a much lower level of hazard. Most fire events are prosaic to very-boring reporting, but are amped by greenie hysterics playing it up constantly in the media. Only occasionally do the fires actually get serious during a given fire season. Most years it does not get interesting at any point.
Nevertheless, it’s always played-up in the media as the “Infinity-Crisis™”. Even when there’s no real crisis, there’s always this imaginary “Infinity-Crisis™”, to trot out and fill-in the airwave’s more boring bits, where the fires are doing nothing much. When I see the media trot out their “Infinity-Crisis™” I just flick the channel or turn the TV off.
As with anything that’s, without due merit, being overly focused on, that always results in hysterical fear-responses and hyperbolic doom language.
I should add that I’m an asthmatic. But when your property is about to burn to the ground, that hardly seems to matter.
It’s only later that it crosses your mind, when days have passed and you’re still struggling with the bodily after-effects of all that smoke to go with the mental and economic after-effects that will last much longer.
The political after-effects are going to be dire for this sort of scaremongering seen in the article above.
The Guardian hasn’t even worked out yet why the state of Queensland cost Bill Shorten the Australian federal election. If it had, it wouldn’t publish this rubbish.
In some respects the Grauniad is probably right in that like Chernobyl the main driver is administrative incompetence. With Chernobyl it involved a recklessly inept reactor design and in NSW and Queensland the real driver is ( like California) utterly inadequate preventive burning and other fire management tasks taken regularly over the years out of the fire season. Same dopey eco loon reasoning that nature is pure and benign and must be untouched.
I was trying to think of a way of saying something like your comment, but couldn’t come up with the words. Well said!
It’s amazing to read the collective madness on display on twitter. Every wildfire, every storm, every dark cloud, poverty, racism, everything wrong with the world is due to climate change. I get the feeling that some of them have descended so far into their psychosis that they won’t be coming back.
People actually think this video reflects reality. It’s all about manipulating damaged minds for political gain.
https://twitter.com/Romanoff2020/status/1206574705110597632
When I see some Grauniad readers out there actually fighting the fires, which the nasty conservatives who live in the bush tend to do, then I might to pretend to read their rubbish . Those that live furtherest from these fires tend to have the most influence over preventing burning off and stopping other well known and long practiced fore reduction techniques. If anyone else dies in areas that have not had fire reduction burns, time there were manslaughter charges laid .
Must be a message for the inner city latte drinkers because it certainly isn’t something most Australians think of in that manner there is a drought with hot, windy weather. I think many many more are upset with the Murray River water plan perhaps they should push that as the alarm story.
I actually lodged a formal complaint today against the ABC about publishing a GreenPeace PR piece about the danger to the Mount Piper Power Station and coal mine as news. The NSW Rural Fire Service had positioned extra resources to make sure the situation was covered. When you trace the story back it was a PR tweet on greenpeace pacific which was nothing more than speculation and reckless trash from non experts reported as news.
Don’t encourage Aunty with positive feedback like that as it’s counterproductive. Counterintuitive too but you know lefties.
About 1985, I remember watching in late evening, from the southern tip of the Cronulla peninsula, across at a huge bushfire burning out of contol in the Royal National Park NSW. Flames up to 100ft high (by comparison to tree height silouetted against the flames) the roar of the fire clearly audible.
There was total destruction and later aerial photos showed the extent.
Local greenies claimed this was a disaster and the end of the park and it would never recover. But, just as the Australian bush always does, 10 yrs later the park had completely recovered and there was no sign of the fire except for some blackening on trunks of more mature trees.
Yes the animals that were killed didnt recover but the same animals moved back in from neighboring unaffected parts and prospered in the new growth after the fire.
This is a natural process that has gone on for many thousands of years, so much so the some plants need a fire to drop their seeds which then germinate quickly in the nutrient rich aftermath of the fire.
Nothing at all to panic about.
“Australia’s politicians face a crisis of legitimacy as fire and smoke chokes the country”
Dissolve Parliament and appoint the Guardian Writers Collective now!
The bushfires in Australia had nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with human negligence that started the fires. It happens every year. Hot air cannot start a fire. It wasn’t lightening because lightning would involve rain that would have snuffed out the fires. It was human related causes, from arsonists to the idiot throwing away his burning cigarette.
I’ve seen moss burning under snow cover in Canada’s Yukon Territory wilderness, the fire having been initiated by lightning strike.
Unfortunately, lightning doesn’t always come with rain. I wish it would.
Warmer weather, more heat, more evaporation, more humidity, guess what, more rain.
More rain more dampness less fire.
A country neighbor of mine wasn’t as excited as I thought he could be watching stormclouds roll over. Said he was worried more about the prospect of ‘dry lighting’.
JoNova’s site has a very good thread on this burning bush topic:
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/mega-blazes-run-riot-and-witchdoctors-rage-against-them-in-australia/
Mega-blazes run riot and witchdoctors rage against them in Australia
The big decision Australia faces — We could try to stop all arsonists, lightning, wind, droughts and cool the entire world, or we could reduce the fuel. Which will it be?
Yes I was thinking the same thing, Wouldn’t it be easier to put in proper fire breaks and clear the land around houses than to change the weather?
Twenty years ago, I worked on a pipeline project in South America. On the Argentina side, we went through large tracts of pampas grass. As a benefit to landowners in the area, while we had the heavy equipment in the area to build the pipeline, we would talk to the landowners and give them heavy machine time for improvements they might want us to do for them while we had the machines there…..things like plowing in roads, or maybe dig a water dugout. EVERY SINGLE ONE….without exception wanted us to do one thing only….and that was grade fire breaks. The locals know….while idiotic politicians hundreds or thousands of miles away dictate to them.
When I was a little girl I just loved reading the Silver Brumby series by Elyne Mitchell. They are set in Australia and wildfires play a prominent role in the stories. The wildlife and the feral horses have to cope with fire semi regularly. The wise old kangaroo speak of the fires coming to the young silver colt and he also knows when a fire is coming and leads the way to safety. Those were classics when I read them. I am old enough for that to mean these wildfires have been going on for a long long time.
As a doomster you have to really work all the angles with the Chernobyls, Amazon rainforests and whatever else you can dredge up with your push button sideshow and spruiking-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-12/nsw-qld-bushfires-could-increase-carbon-footprint-scientists-say/11789504
Here’s their theme song-
“A badly designed badly sited reactor”
To that list you can add badly run.
And now a tourist attraction …
Chernobyl is a tourist attraction only in designated areas, e.g., pavement from which fallout readily washes off from rain. No one with any sense ventures into highly contaminated areas for long, e.g., the Red Forest.
Yeah, sure! Have you been to Cornwall, England?
What we need is nuclear technology that when badly run/implemented can’t produce disastrous consequences like Chernobyl and Fukushima. Supposedly, gen 4 technologies are immune to, or are less likely to result in, such scenarios. Seems like a prudent choice.
Dr Steve Turley pointed out that fires only matter to the Marxist media when Conservatives are in government.
Brazil elects a Conservative government:
Communists: OMG! Brazil is on fire!!!
Australia elects a Conservative government:
Communists: OMG! Australia is on fire!!!
Britain elects a Conservative government:
Communists: …
I bet more people died in Australian bushfires in the last 20 years than died at Chernobyl.
Sadly, very true.
And also for perspective – more people died at Chappaquiddick than have ever died from climate change.
Referring to Chernobyl, and comparing it to a bush fire, is an example of the Guardian, but certainly not, one of any scientific integrity .
(SIC) and the destruction of world heritage.(EQ)
world heritage – but a word, contrived by UNESCO
so let’s see
World: selected from Word Web. explination, Involving the entire earth; not limited or provincial in scope
Heritage, another selected, but suitable definition from World Web “a heritage of freedom” and my addition, unless you were eaten along the way.
So, it does not mention the UN-esco, but in our distant past, UN could have been a grunting expression. In that world of drifting land masses. where formal language was not yet created.
So, a fair dinkum Aussie today- would say get stuffed, we know what is good, and worth preserving in Australia. And we most certainly do not want the totally screwed up, who have failed to preserve their selected, or other so-called world heritage sites, but have also been complicit, in the destruction of others.
They told me that desertification would be rampant now so i wonder how all this fire can happen without combustible…
I thought Australia just exported its Chernobyls like rare earth processing in Malaysia and battery production in China?
Isn’t it strange that Mosh, Loydo and their ilks never respond to articles on alarmismn like this (i.e. when historical facts disagree with their religion?) (Asking for a friend…)
I see the flames are now getting close to Eric. The sheer area burnt is huge – 2.7 million hectares in NSW. About the area of Massachusetts or Belgium. There is a map here.
And that is of course ‘unprecendented in global history’….?
Do you know of a precedent?
In law that usually means never happened before and is then referenced in future similar cases presented in lower courts. These cases can be overruled by the high court. What you are implying is that bush fires in Australia, even on the scale of this year (Shall we ignore those lit deliberately?), have never happened before 2019? In which case you would be provably wrong.
Yeah, Nick, the Peshtigo Marsh wildfire is a good comparison, as is the Chicago fire which took place at the same time.
I do not expect you to understand that there are plenty of comparable precedents and events.
The Chicago fire was urban. The Peshtigo fire burnt 490,000 ha.
“Nick Stokes December 17, 2019 at 7:16 pm”
Talking of natural disasters, the San Francisco quake of 1906 where the city (Urban) burned was not mostly due to the quake, unlike Napier in New Zealand in 1931. No, most of the fire damage was caused by the city fire department (Fire “authority”).
Now local “authorities” in Australia are actively prohibiting rural land owners from managing their land for fire hazard. Case in point;
https://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html
Note the word “illegal”. If everyone at that time had broken the law, and if I was in that situation I would have, in all probability no-one would have died and less property damaged. Given the result in the linked article I would say yes. But your models do not compute reality, eh?
Nick, according to Wikipedia, three larger fires have occurred in Australia since European settlement. The grand-daddy of them all was twice as large as the fires currently burning in NSW, and that was in 1851. The other two were in the 1970’s and 1980’s
So yes, there are precedents.
Nick, Eric no doubt appreciates that areas anywhere outside of cbd postcodes in Australia are officially zoned as “bushfire potential”
And if you need to get some rational perspective about Australian bushfire history, severity and extent, please just invest a little investigative effort at this site –
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/
Thank you Mr. I read most of those papers when they were new. I have a good memory of at least 60 years of bushfire history. This is exceptional in its extent.
So 60 years is a good, long-term record.
How myopic.
Nick, go to Trove and check out 1895 – 1903.
And yes, I dare say I’ve been around as long as you 🙁 Much of my time living in glorious isolation remotely in the hills.
So I lived within the impact zone of many of the bushfire events the alarmists are now calling “unprecedented”. I didn’t have to read the newspapers of the day to appreciate what they were like, and what damage they did.
The galling difference between what happened 125 years ago and today though, is that back then bush dwellers didn’t have the powerful ground-fuel clearing machines and fire control equipment we have now, but are prevented from using under threat of prosecution.
In Australia’s short history there have been over a dozen fires that have exceeded a million hectares. the biggie being in 1851 which was 5 million hectares. Back when we experienced a drought worse than than what is occurring now.
Specifics, please. The 5 million hectares in 1851 is a nonsense that has grown in the telling. You will not find such a claim from the time, for the good reason that they had no way of estimating such an area with a small settled region, and no roads outside it.
Claims of climate catastrophe also grow in the telling, without supporting evidence.
This one is a bit more reliable:
“The 1951-52 Fire Season (January 1952}
The season could possibly be one of the worst on record for eastern Australia when more than 8 million ha were burnt …”.
https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=procite:96d88e42-6798-4f25-9e9a-b3b306fe4736&dsid=DS1
I guess that depends on whether you believe wikipedia or not Nick, not that I take a lot of notice, but its the first on the list googling Australias bushfire history, and the notes state the data was from the ABS.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Bushfires_in_Australia
Just because it goes against the narrative, you just say ”You will not find such a claim from the time” and brush it off with no counter point.
I’ll take a picture of the fuel load near my town Nick, when I get back from my holiday – assuming it hasn’t already burned up.
“when I get back from my holiday”
If you come across our PM, could you tell him there is a problem back home?
Oh please! Now you are displaying your stupidity.
Nick, what exactly would you have the PM do, rather than have a holiday?
These are isolated bush fires, mostly in very remote areas, and are little threat to almost any one, at this time.
Sentinel Hotspots
https://sentinel.ga.gov.au/#/
Face it Nick, you’re just another soft-headed bloke who’s been sucked in by extremist hysteria about very little, actually.
The world HAS to be in jeopardy so that people like Nick can feel important.
Eric, I just received a pic from a local in the bush area I used to live in.
I hope yours is not like the one I got.
Current ground fuel load on what used to be a main fire access trail for the area is thigh deep.
Hasn’t been reduced / cleared / burned since about 2003.
The only fire plan option the locals have left now is “leave”
To be effective, this plan would now need to be executed in September, and held in place until the following July.
The locals are quite willing and capable of carrying out their own annual fuel reduction works, but now removal of fallen timber & overgrown bush from roadsides is prohibited (habitat, apparently).
And as anyone who has watched bushfire behaviour knows, the roadsides are like kero-soaked wicks when a bit of wind gets up.
Well said Mr. I live in a suburb in the Sutherland Shire (The home of the PM) and even here there is fuel load building up along side roads because the side roads are planted with gums all along them. Won’t take much for that to ignite, followed by a tree, followed by the canopy.
Climate activists try to block coal train
https://twitter.com/MiriamWasser/status/1206783147100254208
https://twitter.com/Superunknown112/status/1206930046860046343
If it had hit them I think they would have been in the running for the Darwin award.
I laughed at the comment “Why didn’t the conductor swerve? He saw us on the tracks!”
Maybe if we got our Prime Minister to show real commitment to combating bushfires by joining the CFS?
That would please the Greens and the MSM, right?
Only if he became the union delegate first, Craig.
Ask Tony Abbot if it helped him…
Meanwhile ‘at least 56 people have already been charged or cautioned with 71 bushfire-related offences since August, with 16 ongoing investigations into suspicious fires’ (The Australian Dec. 18).
Add it to the list, climate change causes pyromania.
Here in a retirement village in the town of Gawler, South Australia, some distance from the sea, 45 C is common during our normal summer.
So what do us oldies do, why we go to our units and turn on the air conditioners, hoping that the 44 % of renewables, plus the extra backup from a bank of diesals bought by the government recently will hold out.
Such is life in the Green State of S.A.
MJE VK5ELL
Hi all, hi Nick Stokes …
Here’s an old CSIRO report: https://publications.csiro.au/rpr/download?pid=procite:96d88e42-6798-4f25-9e9a-b3b306fe4736&dsid=DS1 (limited study area, but gives perspective of how extensive the fires have been in the past).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Australian_history/Bushfire_disasters (Let me know if you spot any trends).
Special Xmas assignment for you Nick – devise a plot / timeline showing fires and which political party is in power at the time. Will be fun to see.
He could also include an estimate of the atmospheric CO2 concentration at the time in each case.
” but gives perspective of how extensive the fires have been in the past”
Yes. He says
“Bushfires burning in excess of 10 000 ha and originating from within or travelling into the study area since 1938 are described below and shown in Figs. 3-10. “
The study area is large – most of the forested area south of the Shoalhaven, which covers about a third of the NSW coast. And, as we know, there have been many fires. The worst year he has is 1968-69, when he says:
“During the declared emergency period of 16 days about 47 500 ha were burnt by these fires. “
The current NSW fires have burnt 2.7 million ha. See the difference?
Nick, the CSIRO report that FB Brown links above cites a 1948-49 NSW fire that spread to some 8 million hectares.
But what the hell, we’re nitpicking & arguing semantics in the overall scheme of things.
Facts are – Australia (OI! OI! OI!) has had humongous bushfires most years since time immemorial. Mostly in summer ( say Nov – Apr), but still not unusual in cooler seasons.
FFS, the continent became a virtual fire-dependent eucalyptus monoculture over millions of years of constant bushfires. It’s what the place is, and always (since h. sapiens at least) has been.
Let’s not even pretend that these last 70 years or so of bushfire prevalence have been down to modern living standards.
Also quoting from the report:
‘… The 1951-52 Fire Season (January 1952} The season could possibly be one of the worst on record for eastern Australia when more than 8 million ha were burnt …’.
In 1951 the atmospheric CO2 concentration was ~ 310 ppm.
One common trend I have seen in pictures of the fires of late in the MSM is that they are all taken at night. Makes things look angrier.
Here we go again! Will the BoM make sh!t up, again?
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hottest-day-ever-berejiklian-warns-nsw-ahead-of-heatwave-20191218-p53l63.html#comments
“The Bureau of Meteorology have said preliminary results suggest Tuesday was Australia’s hottest ever day, with an average of 40.9 degrees across the country. The previous record was set on January 7, 2013, at 40.3 degrees.
This hot air mass is so extensive, that preliminary figures show that yesterday was the hottest day on record in Australia,” BOM meteorologist Diana Eadie said.”
Yup! Averages. All made up from a massive pool of 112 devices!
1959 was my first visit to the Northern Territory of Australia, to the Aboriginal mission at Port Keats. In 1969, colleagues discovered the world class Ranger uranium deposits. After consulting to them for a couple of years, I joined them as Chief Geochemist in 1972. We had a fair bit of friendship and involvement with local aborigines. From 1986 to 1992 I was VP or Pres of the NT Chamber of Mines. Aboriginal Affairs were the main agenda item.
I mention dates because in that overall term, academics started to get interested in a fairly comprehensive invention of a new history of the region. Stories we had been told by the locals were replaced by invented stories particularly from the Australian National Uni in Canberra. If aborigines have incredibly strong ties to the land, replete with tales accurately passed down through many generations, then land is power and power gives control of the land. Too bad about concepts like National Sovereignty.
One matter that suffered – in my limited experience – was this claim that all over Australia, aborigines had evolved profoundly wise and unquestionable knowledge about land management via fire use. What I saw, time and again, was lighting of small fires to clear away a few acres of rubbish dry grass so that game food like goanna and wallaby could be hunted more easily. Not uncommonly, a small fire grows to a large one, more by accident than by design. I saw no evidence at all of a wise and proven plan of management, but then my interest was in passing and not research paid for by a grant that required academic papers.
Believe what you will, but be cautious about veracity. History in the Top End has been comprehensively propagandised. Geoff S
I have a friend in Alice Springs that pretty much confirmed what you said, and she’s a full blood Walpiri woman. Hunting and foraging the way they did wasn’t easy, they were naked and spinifex grasses are lovely to look at but they aren’t kind to bare skin. Fire made it easier to flush out the animals and to clear a way to see and capture them.
Regarding the dreamtime stories, that was a thing but the stories weren’t always pretty, you had to keep the kids in line somehow. Grandma raises the young ones, you know what grandma’s are like.
Sorry, for some reason that post arrived out of order.
I agree that there has been a great deal of romanticism about aboriginal fire use.
It is far better regarded as a practical response to certain needs, of which safety from wildfire is one. If you doubt this, imagine living all summer in a dry grassland with no more firefighting capacity than a green branch… and bore better means of escape that the bare-foot express.
The most obvious response, is to burn as early as any part of the landscape is dr enough to carry fire. Burning early means that other parts of the land are still too green to burn,providing natural refuges and firebreaks. Then wen those same teen areas ave dried enough to burn, previous burns provide a mosaic of further refuge areas.
It is only by excluding fire from the landscape that we have created continuous fuels from horizon to horizon.
Clever people our bush Aboriginals.
Don’t be a fool, Nick Stokes.
Fires and Fire Services are run by the States. They are not the province of the Federal government.
Until the States ask for more help, the only thing that the Federal Government gets to do is ask whether there is anything that they need……. and THAT is a job that is just as easily done by the appropriate Ministers.
Morrison attempting to insert himself into a State matter without invitation would not just be contrary to the Australian Constitution, but resented as arrogant .grandstanding. This is just another piece of Green nonsense.
A country neighbor of mine wasn’t as excited as I thought he could be watching stormclouds roll over. Said he was worried more about the prospect of ‘dry lighting’.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/18/australia-experiences-hottest-day-on-record-and-its-worst-ever-spring-bushfire-danger
‘Australia experiences hottest day on record and its worst ever spring bushfire danger’
Really nothing unusual happening in Australia?
Nope, nothing unusual in Australia, or in the lefty propaganda machine. The Grauniad is doing what it always does, cherry picking dates and fear mongering for a leftists agenda.
It was a national average. How many devices were used to make up that number? BoM magic number making going on again!
There is a reason why the BoM does not used temperature records that date before 1910 and that’s because there were hotter records before then.
The Guardian, eh?
How are things in Islington at the moment, Guardian people?
Not so good, correct?
Give it up and go home.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/australia-hit-with-extreme-cold-front-as-snow-hits-and-people-are-warned-of-dangerous-conditions/news-story/61dd84de00f72de94d8f17b8d094bb23
Snow in Australia? Must be due to global warming. Oh, wait!
Your link is dated June 19, 2018, you’re posting a story from the third week of last winter. Why?
The snowfalls in NSW and VIC ended after the first week of Summer, two weeks back. I’ve seen substantial snowfall in Tasmania in January, it happens, it’s weather, it isn’t a climate-change cooling indicator, it is natural variability.
About 90% of Australia’s surface will reach or exceed the temperature of the human body today. That’s an uncomfortable and dangerously high temperature. About 25% of Australia will approach 120 deg F today. It will not be snowing anywhere.
Just because Green idiots post deceitful hysterical incessant BS does not mean it’s OK to do the same.
1959 was my first visit to the Northern Territory of Australia, to the Aboriginal mission at Port Keats. In 1969, colleagues discovered the world class Ranger uranium deposits. After consulting to them for a couple of years, I joined them as Chief Geochemist in 1972. We had a fair bit of friendship and involvement with local aborigines. From 1986 to 1992 I was VP or Pres of the NT Chamber of Mines. Aboriginal Affairs were the main agenda item.
I mention dates because in that overall term, academics started to get interested in a fairly comprehensive invention of a new history of the region. Stories we had been told by the locals were replaced by invented stories particularly from the Australian National Uni in Canberra. If aborigines have incredibly strong ties to the land, replete with tales accurately passed down through many generations, then land is power and power gives control of the land. Too bad about concepts like National Sovereignty.
One matter that suffered – in my limited experience – was this claim that all over Australia, aborigines had evolved profoundly wise and unquestionable knowledge about land management via fire use. What I saw, time and again, was lighting of small fires to clear away a few acres of rubbish dry grass so that game food like goanna and wallaby could be hunted more easily. Not uncommonly, a small fire grows to a large one, more by accident than by design. I saw no evidence at all of a wise and proven plan of management, but then my interest was in passing and not research paid for by a grant that required academic papers.
Believe what you will, but be cautious about veracity. History in the Top End has been comprehensively propagandised. Geoff S
The “guardian newspaper”, in my view, should be depicted as the information to equal mis-information.
This to all.
But a realise we have folk so out of understanding of reality, that this group, who calll themselves an informed source of information, factual, should be highlighted as a prime example of destruction!
When we have so much greed and hunger for power by a few, to have a publication which assists them, depicts warped minds and the need for some of us to alert the sane public to regain the balance in imparted information to correct facts, not to deny anyone wishing to read whatever they wish